Nothing Wasted with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medicurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

If you're here at one of our physical venues or streaming with us online, I'm so glad that you joined us.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

It is no accident that you are here or that you are tuned in with us today.

And I believe it is no accident that I am here today.

I try to lead with transparency.

Um, so I'm gonna let you know from the jump.

Um, I'm not supposed to be here today.

I'm technically on vacation.

Katie is packing the car as we speak, and uh, we had a guest speaker uh who's gonna come in.

It was gonna be awesome.

Uh I got a text early yesterday morning.

They caught some kind of virus, and there were all kinds of things happening inside of them and frankly outside of them, and we said, please do not come in.

And uh, you know, I I like to prep and uh I take what I get to do here very seriously, kind of a point of reference.

Like right now, I'm studying for my June sermons.

Like I like to prep.

Okay.

I found out about this sermon yesterday morning.

All right, so it's a little bit different, uh, not quite as much prep.

Uh I I don't have uh a script, but I do have the scriptures, and I'm excited.

I gotta really give a shout out to my family, uh my kids and Katie and my my oldest son's girlfriend.

We've all been going through the scriptures together, and we're trying to read through it chronologically.

And for the last couple of weeks, we've been in the story of the life of Moses.

And man, that is like a passage of scripture I have read countless times.

It is a story growing up in church that I heard countless times.

Prince of Egypt, right?

One of the greatest movies, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey on a duet in Prince of Egypt, all right?

Like an absolute banger.

I love that movie.

However, God has been like speaking something new to me out of the life of Moses.

And so I told the team, like, uh, I, you know, I didn't get a lot of preparation, but I have a lot of inspiration.

And so I'm excited to hopefully just get across to you some of what God has been doing inside of me, looking in the life of Moses.

And I'm really excited because a lot of times we look at people who are heroes, people who are influencers, who are successful and impactful.

And we have this tendency, I think it's very dangerous.

We focus on the finished product when they're already in their prime, when they're already moving and shaking, when they're already making things happen.

We focus on the product and we skip the process.

And we're a TikTok generation, so if we can't understand it in 15 seconds, we just probably can't understand it, right?

So I want to see the product.

And I don't really want to hear all the backstory.

I skip the process.

And the problem with skipping the process is that the process is filled with pain.

And we don't understand, we we think like, well, they're successful and they're influential and they're making things happen, probably in spite of their pain.

Or probably, you know, even though they had some hardship, you know, somehow they were able to go around it.

And we miss the fact that in reality, the best life, the life you were created to live, a life on purpose and with purpose.

It doesn't happen in spite of your pain, it happens through it.

And we don't know how to manage the process, and we just want the in product.

And so we compare and contrast to the influencers, and we see their finished product, and we're just stuck in our pain, and we seem to get further and further away from the life that we actually want to live.

And I think we've done this with Moses.

So every aspect of his story has been spiritualized and glossed over and whitewashed, put a nice little shine on it.

Even the hardest parts of his story, we only focus on the redemptive act and not the inherent pain that is there.

And because we do that, we just look at Moses and go, Well, I mean, I could never be Moses, I can never be used by God like that.

Look at what an incredible man of God he was.

And we miss the fact because we speed through scripture and we don't pay attention that by the time Moses was 80 years old, his life was an abject failure, full of nothing but tragedy, and no one tells you that about Moses.

They skip the process, and because we don't pay attention to the process, you don't know how to process the pain in your own life to get to the final product of who God wants you to be.

My message today is nothing wasted.

Nothing wasted.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your great love for us.

We thank you that with everything in our life, all the things that happen to us and around us and through us, you are a God of redemption.

You are not interested in wasting one single second.

And so we just lean into you, Holy Spirit.

I ask that you would speak through me, that you would give me clarity, that you would help me be concise, that you would get your word across.

God, wherever we're at, I thank you for a place where anybody can come.

For those who are not believers, who are on the fence, who are skeptical, that as they listen in, Holy Spirit, you would grip their hearts.

For those who are believers and they're struggling, Holy Spirit, that you would speak to them, convict them, challenge them, encourage them.

There are hundreds of unique lives who are listening to this message.

And I pray that you, Jesus, would speak to every one of them uniquely what they need, that they would grasp it, apply it, and live it out.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

If you want nothing to be wasted, say amen.

Amen.

It's a great verse.

Uh it's one of the ones we quote all the time, Romans 8, 28.

It says this it says, We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purposes.

And that sounds great, and that's like a great verse, and sometimes we throw that at someone when they're in a hard time.

It's like, just remember, you know, all things work together for good.

And then we leave out the last half, you know, because we're like angry and cursing God and we don't want anything to do with God anymore.

And it's like, uh, things might not work out so good, right?

Because things work out for the good of those who love God, and that's great, and are called according to his purpose.

And I think in the life of Moses, we're gonna see what both of those things look like to not only love the Lord, but to walk according to his purposes for your life.

Moses was born into a very, very difficult situation.

There is some suffering that we bring on ourselves through our own behaviors, actions, and reactions.

And then there is unwarranted suffering that comes on us, even though we didn't do anything to deserve it.

In the beginning of Moses' life, he endured immense suffering that he did not deserve.

As a matter of fact, about 400 years earlier, his ancestors had disobeyed God and stayed in Egypt when they were supposed to go back to the promised land.

Because of that, Egypt saw them as a threat.

New kings came into place that were not friendly with them, and they put them into slavery.

They were a nation of people and they were populating really rapidly.

Pretty soon there was over a million of them.

And Egypt became nervous because there were so many Israelites that they could legitimately be a threat to the Egyptian Empire.

And so they said, We gotta do something about this.

They have too many fighting age men coming up, and so the Pharaoh put out uh an evil edict.

He said, We are gonna take any male baby that is born to the Israelites, and we will kill them by drowning them in the Nile River.

Every male child born to the Israelites will be killed by being drowned in the Nile River.

That is what Moses is born into.

In Exodus chapter two, we pick up his story.

It says, Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman, and the woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

And when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months.

But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him.

She coated it with asphalt and pitch.

She made it buoyant.

She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

And then his sister stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him.

Now there is one side of this story, and this is the side that we like because it's very spiritual and it's very glossy, and that is the faith of Moses' mother.

Unbelievable faith.

Just to keep him hidden for three months was at risk of her life and the life of her entire family.

But she believed that God had a call on her baby's life.

And so she risked her life in order to keep him safe.

And then when she could no longer hide him, probably because he got that age where babies start doing what babies do.

They start making some noise, right?

She couldn't hide him any longer.

And so she decided, in this incredible act of faith, to get a basket, to make it buoyant, to put her little baby in there, and to send it, do not miss this, down the Nile.

The Nile is where the babies go to die.

It's so interesting, and it's a it's an incredible metaphor for parenting.

And this is not a parenting talk, so I'm gonna give this to you for free.

And it already made me go over my time once, it's gonna make me go over my time again.

But I think this is important because we got parents in here.

We just did a parenting sermon a few weeks ago.

You need to know this.

The same river that was the death of the Israelite babies was the deliverance of Moses.

And the only difference is how the parents protected him.

What the parents put around him, how they sheltered him.

That's our job.

And as parents, especially today, we got helicopter parents.

You see parents and they're on the playground and they're following their kid around.

Oh, baby, that's a steep slide.

We're following the kids around, you know?

Because heaven forbid they fall, right?

Heaven forbid you gotta put a band-aid on your kid.

And so we follow them around, we do that when they're three, and then when they're 13, and then when they're 23, and then when they're 33, and you're like, I mean, you don't have to move out.

Yes, they do, all right?

Like, we have this idea that the way we protect our kids is by never letting them go to the Nile.

We never let them out to the world.

You know what Moses' mother is?

She's a foreshadowing of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who knew that for her child to reach his destiny, she had to let him go.

The problem is we have parents who are letting their kids go with no protection.

And so our kids sink and they drown in the chaos and the sin and the confusion and the lust and the degradation of the world.

We have parents who are so busy fighting each other that they are not fighting for their kids.

We have parents who will give their kids anything they ask for, even if it will sink their lives.

And so our job is to follow God and model that and model our faith and make sure we're putting them and putting around them and instilling in them what they need so they will not drown, they will be delivered.

And we have to send our kids out into the world, because the same world that could kill them is the same world where God has called them.

So Moses' mother is this picture of incredible faith.

At the same time, though, we're gonna be real about this story.

Because while it's an act of great faith, from the mother to Moses, this is the moment of abandonment.

You guys know I'm an adoptive dad.

I adopted my kids.

And you learn a lot in the adoption journey.

One of the things you learn is you can adopt a baby, an infant, and most of them will still grow up at some point and have to wrestle with abandonment issues.

There is something about being severed from biological parents.

This is the moment of abandonment.

It's the moment where Moses' life changed forever.

And as a parent, you might know you're doing the right thing for your kid.

It doesn't mean that that kid doesn't take away trauma and suffering from it.

And so this is the moment of Moses' abandonment.

This is the start of his story.

It goes on and says, Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank, and she saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent her slave girl, who took it, opened it, and saw him, Moses, the child.

There he was, a little boy crying.

She felt sorry for him, and she said, This is one of the Hebrew boys.

And then Moses' sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?

Go, Pharaoh's daughter told her.

So the girl went, called the boy's mother.

And then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child and nurse him for me, and I'll pay your wages.

So the woman took the boy and nursed him.

And when the child grew older, when he was weaned from his mother, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and Moses became her son, and she named him Moses because she said, I drew him out of the water.

And we over-spiritualize this, and this is an incredible moment.

And God was with Moses, and God was with the mother of Moses.

But at the same time, can you put yourself in their shoes?

Can you imagine the process that his mother had to go through?

Moms, moms at our venues, moms online.

Can you imagine the process you would have to go through to actually put that basket in the water and let your hands off of it to float down the current?

Can you imagine the amount of work you would do to get to a point of closure where you could let him go and now he's coming back?

But not for good.

Now he's coming back just for you to have to let him go again.

And your faith was in God, God will protect him.

It's the only way you do something like that, God will protect him.

The last thing you could ever imagine is that God protecting your Hebrew son is by adopting him into the family who is murdering all the Hebrew sons.

We miss this.

We go too fast.

Moses is now adopted and raised by the enemy.

He grows up in the palace of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh now has someone in his lineage who is himself Hebrew.

And I imagine that Pharaoh had some sick, dark fantasy about Moses coming of age and how demoralizing it was going to be to his workforce when the person holding the whip was one of their own.

Moses came up in the palace.

That's how he was raised.

He would have been educated at the highest level in the known world.

He would have traveled.

He would have been articulate.

He may have been the first literate Israelite in history.

But there's a problem.

Moses doesn't know who he is.

He's not Egyptian enough for the Egyptians.

He's obviously not Egyptian.

He doesn't look Egyptian.

And at the same time, he's not Hebrew enough for the Hebrews.

He lives in an identity crisis.

I grew up an army brat.

We moved all over the place.

And our journey was unusual because uh my dad was very competent.

He was promoted a lot.

And that was great for him.

It just meant we moved all of the time.

I lived in 18 homes before I was 18 years old.

We moved all the time.

When I was in my formative years, we spent a couple years in Texas and then we moved up to Washington, D.C.

I was a basketball player.

My teammates in DC called me Tex because I said y'all.

And I had a bit of an accent at that point.

We lived there for a few years and then moved back to Texas.

Now my accent's gone.

I look different, dress different, talk different.

I make the team in Texas and they call me DC.

It's like I wasn't Texas enough for Texas.

I wasn't DC enough for DC, you know?

I was always somewhere in between.

That can create a bit of an identity crisis and compared to what Moses was going through, that's nothing.

He doesn't know who he is, and the people who look like him are living in miserable conditions.

Forced slave labor.

And the person he calls mom is the captors who are putting this on the Hebrews.

And at some point he has to step out and decide.

And so Moses, we think, is about 40 years old.

So we have a time jump here in the next verse.

Verse 11 years later, Moses is a man now.

Years later, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and he observed their force labor.

And he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew.

Look at this.

One of his people.

He's decided.

I'm stepping out of my identity crisis.

You know what?

I was born a Hebrew.

I'm gonna die a Hebrew.

I'm gonna stand up.

Who else could lead the Hebrews?

They can't lead themselves, they've been in slavery for almost 400 years.

I'll lead the Hebrews.

I'm educated, I've been taught the art of war, I've been taught leadership at the highest levels, I know how to organize things, I am literate, I am powerful, I am influential.

Who else would lead them?

I will lead them.

And he goes out and he sees an Egyptian beating on his own kind.

Identity crisis over.

I'm a Hebrew now and I will lead them.

Verse 12 looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and buried him in the sand.

Identity crisis over.

I'm gonna lead, I'm powerful.

I'm in the lineage of the Pharaoh.

If someone causes problems, we take care of problems.

In this moment now, he is trying to lead, but he's leading out of his pain.

He's leading out of his crisis, he's leading out of his hurt, and it's resulting in rage and anger and malice.

He kills a man, and now he's got skin in the game.

Surely the Hebrews are ready to be led by him.

The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting.

He asked the one who was in the wrong, why are you attacking your neighbor?

He's he's the leader now.

He's gonna settle some disputes.

They said, Who made you the commander and judge over us?

What are you gonna do?

Kill me?

Like you killed the Egyptian?

And Moses became afraid and he thought, What I did is certainly known.

And when Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

Identity crisis.

He tries to step up in leadership, and the Hebrews reject him.

You know what would happen if one of Pharaoh's actual relatives killed somebody?

Do you know what would actually happen?

Nothing.

When Moses kills someone, he finds out exactly where he sits in the family.

He's not a real Egyptian.

He tries to lead the Hebrews, he's not a real Hebrew.

He tried to be a leader, no one wanted to follow him.

And so he runs off to Midian, which is like the harshest desert climate imaginable.

Okay, this guy has grown up in the lap of luxury, and now he is situated in the midst of the desert.

He ends up meeting a man named Jethro, he's a priest in Midian, and he marries one of Jethro's daughters, and he has his first son, and he names his son Gershom, which means a resident alien in a foreign land.

The guy who never belonged anywhere has now just cemented the fact, once again, he's not Egyptian enough for the Egyptians, he's not Hebrew enough for the Hebrews, and he certainly is not a Midianite, and he spends the next 40 years in obscurity.

This is really difficult.

After 40 years, God has a plan for Moses.

We move on to chapter three.

It says, Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian.

He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and he came to Horeb.

Remember this, the mountain of God.

And then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush.

As Moses looked, he saw the bush was on fire, but it was not consumed, and so Moses thought, I must go over and look at this remarkable sight.

Why isn't the bush burning up?

And you might know the story, it's not burning up because the fire is the fire of the Spirit of God, and it's getting ready to call Moses.

Now, you haven't thought about the story of Moses through the lens of the process and the unbelievable, unbearable pain he's gone through.

But when you realize that, all of a sudden it makes sense.

Why Moses pushes back on God's calling?

God is like, I want you to go back and confront Pharaoh, the Egyptian who rejected you because you weren't a real Egyptian.

And once you confront Pharaoh, then you're going to lead the Hebrew people.

The Hebrew people who already rejected his leadership because he was not Hebrew enough for the Hebrews.

Oh, and by the way, when he left Egypt, he was wanted for murder.

Moses hears all this and is like, I know you're God, and all that.

This plan is a bad plan, right?

Like, I'm not in on this plan.

You have got the wrong guy.

I'm 80 years old.

I've been wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years now.

I am nothing but an abject, certified failure.

See, this moment of calling is when you have to decide how your life is going to progress.

And you need to know this your life works in cycles.

And the way that, like, almost everyone is navigating their life is in What I would call a destructive cycle.

A destructive cycle is when you allow the pain of your past to drive you into sinful patterns, ungodly patterns, unhelpful patterns.

There is pain in your life.

We say it all the time at Medichurch, your suffering is scalable.

So you can look at someone next to you and go, I haven't suffered anything like they've suffered.

And you can look at the other person next to you and go, they haven't suffered anything like I've suffered.

And that's kind of good to ground yourself.

It doesn't actually matter because your suffering is your suffering.

And likely, if left unchecked, it will move you into a destructive cycle.

And so our pain causes us to create strengths, coping mechanisms, addictions, worldviews, ideologies, all with the express intent of alleviating your pain.

And most people spend their entire lives working out not to live God's purposes, but to alleviate their pain.

And so you think if I can just make enough money, or if I can have enough success, or enough TikTok followers, or enough influence, if I can have sex with enough people, if I can just get high enough every night, I won't remember my pain.

If I can just have enough friends, then maybe I'll feel valued and the source of my pain will go away.

If I just gossip about others, then maybe I will project my insecurities and people will think about them and not focus on my pain.

And maybe if I just act up, someone will come to my rescue and finally care about me.

And maybe if I give myself away to enough men, I'll finally feel worthy since I never felt worthy growing up.

We have all of this pain in the process, and we can't get to the final product of the life that God created us to live because we're in a destructive cycle.

And you will stay in a destructive cycle unless something radical happens to interrupt it.

And there is another option.

And most people just don't know this.

And we think like church is like, you know, this thing that we come to on Sundays and we sit and we we sing, and then, you know, Clayton like yells and he sweats, and then we all go home.

You know, like that, like that's church or whatever.

Instead of seeing this as a dynamic movement, that yes, we come together and have a service, we meet together, but when church really starts, is when you leave the doors of your venue and you go move together.

And as you move, you are moving in a cycle.

And there's another option.

Instead of the destructive cycle, you can live in the divine cycle.

And the divine cycle is when you allow God to redeem your pain for his purpose.

And what it requires is that you submit to God fully, completely.

What it requires is that you repent, which means to change your mind about how you're living, to change your mind about where your hope is, to change your mind about what you're living for, to change your mind about why God has given you your gifts and talents.

We must submit and we must repent and learn to fully trust the Lord.

And when you do that, what will happen is what we're gonna see in the life of Moses.

It's this thing I'm calling like spiritual mirroring.

Like if you look at the pain in the back half of your life, God will take every piece of pain and suffering and devastation and chaos and trauma, and he will redeem it for purpose and calling and gifting and commission and your future and your destiny and the kingdom of God.

It's spiritual mirroring, and you can stand at that moment of decision to step out of the destructive cycle and into the divine cycle.

And over time you can look back with retrospect and you can start seeing how even in the worst times of your life, God is now redeeming it to prepare you for the person he created you to be.

Moses wasn't like born and then took a vacation in Midian and then you know got a mani petty and then went and walked through the Red Sea.

And that is how we tell the story, and we we we're killing ourselves by not paying attention to the pain in the process.

Moses was a life of abandonment.

Maybe you know what it's like to be abandoned.

Maybe one of your parents walked out of your life and you never saw him.

Or maybe you did see him, but even when you saw him, it was kind of weird, and you knew like they had much higher priorities than you.

Maybe you had both parents in the home, but they were so caught up in their own mess, they really didn't pay you any attention.

And you can look back now and you can see that you were acting out, but your acting out was really just like someone, please, God, pay attention to me, please.

Maybe you were abandoned later in life.

Maybe you had people that were very close to you and they walked away from you, or a rumor spread about you in your formative years, and everyone believed it, even though it wasn't true, and people decided that you were out.

Maybe your marriage fell apart.

They stepped out, they walked out, they found someone new.

We know what it feels like to be abandoned.

Maybe you know what it's like to live in an identity crisis.

You don't really know who you are.

So you kind of try on all these different costumes.

This is what I'm gonna do now.

This is the career now.

I'm gonna jump from career to career, I'm gonna jump from style to style, from hobby to hobby, from friend group to friend group.

I'm gonna try all the different things.

You know, the drinking was working, but now it's not, so I'm gonna try some drugs, the drugs weren't working, I'm gonna go harder drugs, the drugs aren't working, I'm gonna try sex, the sex isn't working.

We just try, it's like, who am I and what's gonna work, and how do I feel fulfilled?

Maybe you know what it's like to fail.

Moses was like, I got this, bro.

Who who better to lead than me?

And he went out to his own people, and his people were like, bro, we know who you are.

Palace boy, Pharaoh's grandson, no thank you.

Maybe you've tried to lead and people weren't interested.

Maybe that thing that God put on your heart and you started the business, and six months later it had to fold up.

So much pain, it's inevitable.

And we don't believe God directly causes the pain in your life.

We caused the pain.

We brought sin into the world, and sin is what resulted in brokenness and destruction and division and confusion and chaos.

We brought it.

But God, you need to know this: God is like leaned in, and he cares about your life, and his heart breaks for your heartbreak, and he's just ready to redeem it.

But you have to submit and repent and truly trust the Lord.

I want to show you the spiritual mirroring in the life of Moses.

We're gonna get into this, we're gonna cover a lot of scripture, and I'm gonna move quickly.

We're gonna go back through the story.

We already read it, but it says at the very beginning, when his mother could no longer hide him, she got a basket, she made it buoyant, she placed the child in it, she set him in the Nile.

He was abandoned to the water.

Maybe you know the story.

God calls Moses, he's reluctant, but he goes back, he confronts Pharaoh.

God brings 10 different plagues to give Pharaoh's attention.

Finally, Pharaoh's like, you know what?

You know what?

Fine.

Your people can go, you're free, you can go to the promised land, get out of here, just take the plagues away.

And then Pharaoh changes his mind.

And God leads Israel on a very specific path that leads them to an impassable body of water.

And then, in what could be seen as God's like sick, twisted idea, Pharaoh changes his mind and sends the entire Egyptian army after them.

And now they are pinned down between the sea that they cannot pass, the water that will be their death, and the Egyptian army.

I read this on, you know, I'm reading through this with my kids and my wife, and oh man, this this like broke me the morning we read this.

In Exodus 14, 13, as they are pinned down, it says Moses said to the people, do not be afraid.

Stand firm and see the Lord's salvation that he will accomplish for you today.

For the Egyptians you see today, you'll never see again.

The Lord will fight for you, and you must be quiet.

Can I tell you, um, in moments of pressure, as I'm continuing to pursue sanctification in my own life, there are still these moments where I get, you know, those ulcers and you can't sleep at night, and you're in the grip, and you're like, I don't know how it's gonna work.

And God, are you here and are you paying attention?

And I read that, and I'm like, ooh, I'm not there yet.

I'm not Moses yet.

In this moment of pressure, just going, hey, hey, hey, everyone, calm down.

God's got this.

And everyone's like, Yeah, but there's there's an army, and then there's a sea, and so we're either getting spears or we're drowning.

Spiritual mirroring.

Moses is like, I've been up against water before.

The moment of his first trauma prepared him for the moment of his nation's deliverance, for the moment of his nation's triumph.

When he was abandoned as a baby, he was abandoned to the waters, and now he's standing at the waters, going, I know what God can do with water.

Everyone sit back and watch what God does.

When you're in the destructive cycle, you cannot see this.

And God is going, I know it hurts, and I know it was traumatic, and and I know that that your heart is just broken by what happened to you when you were four years old or 14 years old or 34 years old.

But if you can trust me and submit to me and repent and change your mind, watch how I use the worst moments of your life to prepare you for the hardest moments of your life so that God can get the glory and you can live as the product, the end product that God designed your life to be.

Moses is like, I'm not scared of water, bro.

I was three months old in the Nile.

And God parts the water.

This is a change of perspective that can make your life bulletproof.

But if you're in the wrong cycle, you cannot see it.

I gotta keep moving.

I wanna I wanna show you spiritual mirroring, spiritual mirroring.

Here's what happened in Exodus 210.

When the child grew older, she brought him into Pharaoh's daughter, he became her son, and she named him.

His mom didn't get to name him, the enemy named him.

His mom didn't get to raise him, the enemy raised him.

Can you imagine Pharaoh, who's probably tripped out like you adopted who?

You know, like you're adopting our slaves?

Like, okay.

And that's like, all right, we'll bring him up.

Every day, the Hebrews will have to know one of their own, we've got him.

One of their own, we're educating him.

One of their own, we're training him.

We go all the way to the New Testament, the book of Acts, Stephen, the first martyr, the first man to give his life for Jesus Christ.

He is preaching about all that God has done through the ages.

Here's what he says in Acts 7.21.

When Moses was put outside, Pharaoh's daughter adopted and raised him as her own son.

So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and in his actions.

When you live in the divine cycle, it doesn't mean that the enemy will not come after you, will not attack you, will not try to derail you.

But think about this.

Pharaoh thought he was raising up Moses to be a thumb in the face of all of the Israelites.

He didn't know that all the training and all the education and all of the traveling and teaching them how to read and teaching them how to write and teaching him the art of war and teaching him how to lead, that God was going to use that for Moses to walk back into Egypt and take his people out with him.

God will turn all things for good for those who love him and are willing to submit and repent and trust God with the purpose that God has on their lives.

You should say amen and clap for that because the enemy will come after you.

And the enemy thinks he can destroy you.

And God always has the upper hand.

And God's just like leaned in, like, will you let me do it?

And when we're in the destructive cycle, what we're saying is, I got it.

I've got some pain I'm dealing with.

God, I don't know if you know this, but you know, I was kind of abandoned, young, and so I'm gonna work through that, and then I'm sure you got plans.

I'm gonna let me get through my pain, and then maybe I can be fruitful for the kingdom of God.

And God's like, you can be fruitful for the kingdom of God because of your pain.

Let me redeem it.

I'm going too slow.

Spiritual mirroring.

Let's keep going.

This is the story of his young life.

Remember, he tries to lead the Hebrews, and what do they say?

Verse 14 in Exodus 2 Who made you a commander and judge over us?

The man replied.

Acts 7, 35.

This Moses, whom his own people rejected when they said, he's quoting Exodus, who appointed you a ruler and a judge?

This one God sent as a ruler and a deliverer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

This man led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years.

You might be wondering, if you never took your time with the story of Moses, how did the Israelites survive 40 years in the wilderness?

It's because they had a leader who had just spent 40 years in the wilderness.

Your time where you're like, I'm not hearing from God, and I'm not getting what I need, and I don't have the money that I need, and I don't have the relationships that I need, and I don't have the clarity that I need.

Your wilderness season, if you will choose to live in the divine cycle, is preparing you for your greatest leadership opportunity yet.

Moses is wandering around Midian for 40 years, like, man, I really screwed that up.

I could have just kept my mouth shut and lived in the palace.

That would have been good life, you know?

I could have not killed that guy.

Maybe the Hebrews would have accepted me.

Like all these regrets.

Meanwhile, he's learning how to exist in the wilderness, he's learning how to survive in the wilderness, he's learning how to farm in the wilderness, he's learning how to find water in the wilderness, not knowing God is gonna appear to him and call him to lead his people for 40 years into the wilderness.

Spiritual mirroring.

When you fully trust and submit to God, when you repent of your destructive cycle and give yourself to God's divine cycle, nothing is wasted.

It gets better.

In Exodus 3, verse 1.

Exodus 3:1

Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro.

This is when he's in the wilderness.

The first time, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb.

Listen, the mountain of God.

The mountain of God.

Moses goes back, ten plagues happen, the people are delivered, they go through the Red Sea and they go out to the wilderness.

We're all the way in Exodus 19 now.

It says, in the third month, from the very day the Israelites left the land of Egypt, they came to the Sinai wilderness.

They traveled from Rephedem, came to the Sinai wilderness, and camped in the wilderness.

Israel camped there in front of the mountain.

And Moses went up, the mountain of God.

And the Lord called to him from the mountain.

This is what you must say to the house of Jacob and explain to the Israelites.

The place of his calling, where he pushed back, God, you got the wrong guy.

You definitely like if you're paying any attention, God, you have got the wrong guy.

My life is nothing but pain and suffering and screwing things up and being rejected.

The place of his calling, where he chose two paths: the destructive cycle, he could have kept living, or the divine cycle.

Repent, change your mind, follow God.

He chose to walk that divine calling, and it led him back to the very mountain where God met him in the burning bush.

And the place of his calling became the place of his commissioning.

This is the moment where for the first time Israel became a nation.

They got law, they got governance, and they got a leader.

This is the promise to Abraham all the way back in Genesis 12.

I will make you a great nation.

It didn't happen until this moment on the mountain of God.

And you need to know this.

When you start walking out your purpose, sometimes the path of purpose will take you right back into your most severe pain.

Sometimes it will take you right back to the people who hurt you the most.

And those are the moments where it's like, do you really trust the Lord?

The enemies of God will constantly be just pulling you, pulling you, begging you, bribing you, pleading with you to get back on the destructive cycle.

Anything to keep you away from God's purpose on your life.

Can you continue to walk in purpose even when the most severe pain comes?

I wish that the life of Moses ended on the divine cycle.

It ended with this great example of what to do, but maybe even more beneficial is his life actually ends on the destructive cycle.

I want to remind you the moment where Moses forfeited his leadership at 40 years old.

In Exodus 2, it says, looking all around him and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hit him in the sand.

We're now all the way in Numbers 20, 40 years in the wilderness, and they're about to go into the promised land.

The people are doing what they do best.

They are complaining.

They complain and whine all the time.

Anyone have kids?

Just all the time.

I tell my kids, I and they hate it and they don't really listen to it, but I say, hey, we are tiners, not whiners.

Okay?

We don't whine in this family.

But they they they do be whining actually a lot.

All throughout the wilderness, they're like, man, you should have left us in Egypt.

You just brought us out here to die.

You know, we we at least had like something to do.

We had meals.

Moses, why'd you bring us out here?

We need new leaders.

Why don't we just go back to Egypt?

Now remember what you learned today.

Moses' pain is sourced in an identity crisis.

Not Egyptian enough for the Egyptians, not Hebrew enough for the Hebrews.

And every time they poke at him and say, Can't we just go back to Egypt?

There's subtext.

And once again they're thirsty and they haven't been able to source water.

And so we pick that up in Numbers 20.

Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting, and they fell face down, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, Take the staff and assemble the community.

You and your brother Aaron are to speak to the rock.

You are to speak to the rock while everyone watches, and the rock will give water.

You will bring out water from them, the rock, and provide drink for the community and their livestock.

And so Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he had commanded him.

Moses and Aaron summoned the assembly in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, you morons, you ungrateful children, listen, you rebels, must we bring water out of this rock for you?

And Moses raised his hand and he struck the rock, not once, but twice.

And abundant water did gush out, and the community and their livestock drank.

Stop.

That is the word naka, the Hebrew word nakah.

He struck the rock, and it is the exact same word as when he struck the Egyptian and killed him.

When you live in the destructive pattern, you repeat patterns, repeat cycles of worst ways, sinful, ungodly patterns, in order to satiate your pain.

Here's what happened.

The first time he struck, it cost him the kingdom.

It cost him his leadership.

Forty, eighty years later, he strikes again.

It costs him the kingdom.

It costs him his leadership.

The easiest thing in the world is to live in the destructive cycle of your worst-way patterns.

It's the easiest thing.

All you have to do is nothing, and you will repeat sinful patterns.

It's a consequence of the broken and sinful world that we live in.

But we have a promise in scripture.

We know that God works all things for good.

In other words, nothing is wasted.

Your worst moment, your most insane trauma, your greatest moments of pain, nothing is wasted.

We know that all things work together for those who love God and are walking according to his promises.

Not living to try and alleviate our pain, but trusting God with our pain, submitting and repenting and trusting and walking out the divine cycle.

Spiritual mirroring.

And all throughout scripture, we have these great leaders, and they are mirrors of what is to come.

Moses is a foreshadowing of Jesus.

Jesus came as the second Adam, the second Abraham, the second Moses, the second David.

And all of them had destructive tendencies and would cycle into divine and cycle into destructive, like us, because we're broken and fallen and fallible, but not Jesus.

He came.

Even the pain of the cross would not turn him.

Moses came as a foreshadow of Jesus by leading God's people out of physical, actual captivity and slavery.

And Jesus came to offer us something even greater.

He offers us escape from the captivity and the slavery of our sin and our pain.

Jesus lived the perfect life, the life we can't live, and he gave that life for us.

And even once they killed him, he proved to us that with Jesus, death does not have the final word.

And when Jesus walked out of his own grave, he showed us that his promise of our eventual resurrection is solid.

Jesus didn't come, contrary to popular belief, offering you a religious experience.

He came offering you a relationship with him.

And all he asks for is your faith.

And once you've put your faith in Jesus, your sins are forgiven, all of them.

You have eternal life forever.

And you have the opportunity to walk with the divine.

To take the pain that has happened to you that breaks your heart and my heart and God's heart, and to allow God to redeem it for purpose like you cannot imagine.

As we close across our venues, would you pray with me right where you're at?

Just bow your head and close your eyes, create some space.

I know there's pain in your life.

And the question is, what are you doing about it?

Are you living with your own gifts, your own strengths, your own talents, your own outlook, your own perspective, and trying to just alleviate pain?

It's one way to live, but it will cost you, it will be destructive.

Or are you willing to submit?

To trust that God's ways are better than your ways, to repent, to change your mind and decide to cling to the words of God.

Are you willing to trust Him fully, even when it's at its hardest?

As always, I want to give an opportunity for anyone at our venues online who's never had a moment in time where they have started a relationship with Jesus.

He doesn't ask you to jump through hoops, there's no 10-point plan.

What he asks for is your faith, believing he is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he's done.

So if you've never had a moment in time where you've made the decision to put your faith in Jesus, and you're ready to do that today, I want to ask you across our venues, with everyone's eyes closed, to just simply raise your hand.

You will know it.

If the Holy Spirit has gripped your heart today, you will know it.

And I'm asking you to respond by raising your hand, you're saying, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know Jesus sees and accepts your faith.

And all I want to do is help you acknowledge this moment through a very simple prayer.

So I'm gonna ask you if you raised your hand to repeat this prayer with me.

And so no one feels called out.

I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.